2. Earth Simulator (Japan) – $500 million
The Earth Simulator (quite the ominous name) was developed by the Japanese government way back in 1997. The project cost 60 billion yen, or roughly $500 million in today’s economy. It was developed as a highly parallel vector supercomputer system, used to run global climate models, and to evaluate the effects of global warming and problems in solid earth geophysics.
The Earth Simulator (ES) was completed in 2002, developed for Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency, the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute, and the Japan Marine Science and Technology Center.
ES was the fastest supercomputer in the world from 2002 to 2004. As you can expect from the rapid growth of technology since then, it doesn’t hold a candle to the speed of modern supercomputers, but it was big news in the early 21st century. The Earth Simulator System has several features to help protect the computer from earthquakes (rubber supports on a seismic isolation system) and lightning (a high-voltage, shielded nest that hangs over the building).
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